THIS DAD'S A REAL 'CATCH'
Baby-toss heroics as LI blaze rages
A mom was forced to drop her baby from a second-floor balcony to the infant’s father — and then leap herself after being trapped by a fast-moving blaze in a Long Island apartment building early Sunday, authorities said.
The balcony at the Colony Park Luxury Apartments complex in Ronkonkoma was engulfed in flames within minutes of the mother, Jenna Schlick, joining her family and jumping from the second floor around 1 a.m. Sunday, video shows.
James Schlick identified himself as the hero dad in a Facebook post.
“This was my apartment complex last night. Luckily i was able to get my wife and baby out to safety,” he wrote.
“We had to jump off the balcony during the raging fire and tons of smoke. I was the ‘innocent bystander’ that caught my baby.”
The fire at the two-story apartment complex on Peconic Street left five units uninhabitable, but no one was badly injured, police said.
Resident Tina Donegan said she woke up to somebody’s kids banging on a door in the complex yelling, “Fire! Fire! Get out!”
When she and her son, Liam, ran outside they saw the massive blaze tear through the apartments and watched as the man, woman and baby escaped over the balcony.
“They had no other way to get out,” she said, describing the fire as “huge.”
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Donegan said.
Upon their arrival, firefighters from the Lakeland Fire Department were met with a ball of fire and a wall of smoke.
Jenna Schlick and daughter Julia were taken to Stony Brook University Hospital for minor injuries, according to authorities.
Dad James also suffered minor injuries and was taken to Long Island Community Hospital.
Detectives are investigating the cause of the fire.